Faux fondue

On our recent vacation to France we saw a lot of restaurants specializing in fondue, that delicious bubbly cheese genre that peaked in the US 40 years ago and hasn't been seen much on this side of the Atlantic ever since.  But our guides said it's enjoying a trendy revival in Paris these days.

As we walked along one crowded sidewalk we threaded our way past this table full of fondue.  You'll notice there are no diners at the table -- that's because the food is plastic.

It does look pretty good, nevertheless.

A dessert we didn't try

Le Grand Vefour, one of the most famous of Parisian spots, was opened in 1784 and everybody who was anybody over the centuries, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, had to eat there.  But not us.  The cheapest prix fixe menu is 98 euros (about $130).

I was intrigued by one of the 34 euro desserts -- creme brulee with artichokes and bean jam.  Maybe I'll try to make that at home.

Or maybe not.

Janet's desserts

When you don't eat sugar, as I don't, it's fun to have dinner companions who love dessert.  That way you get to not only read the dessert menu, you get to see all kinds of delicious goodies in the flesh.

Our friend Janet, who was with us in Paris, is one of those lucky people who can eat dessert all the time and still be slim and fit.  As the week began she was on an apple kick, and I documented three of her treats.

A plain dish of apples, except with some subtle glaze to make it special:

An apple tart:

Most beautiful of all, this extravaganza of pastry, apples, ice cream and chocolate:

After we split up, Janet found one last dessert that she called the best of the whole trip.  Profiteroles -- three cream puffs filled with ice cream, surrounded by whipped cream, and a pot of hot chocolate to pour over the top.  Too bad the portion was so small.

Cochon times two

Our first week in Paris we ate at a lovely restaurant with a limited menu for our large group, and we both ordered the medallions of pork with dark cherries.  The meat was fixed with a rich sauce and perched on top of smooth, rich mashed potatoes.

At the end of our visit we decided this restaurant, Le Café Bonal on Boulevard Voltaire, was our favorite of the trip and chose it for our last hurrah.  This time, with the whole menu to pick from, I ordered the same pork dish as I had the previous week.  It was just as good, but with a whole lot more cherry sauce than the first time!  (I liked the first version best; the potatoes had more chance to shine through.)

Salade, the French way

If there was anything to be slightly disappointed with in our recent trip to France, it was the salad.  I guess we're spoiled in the US with the huge variety of produce and imaginative combinations suggested by restaurants, television and food writing.  But both in Germany (where we spent a month in 2010) and in France we have noted the sameness of the side salads.  Lettuce, maybe some tomatoes.  Perfectly adequate, but less than inspiring.



Big salads, including protein and various other ingredients, are on many menus as main courses, but if you've ordered a meat or fish you'll often just get a small portion of greens to go with.  You'll often find the salad on the same plate as your entree, underneath it, on top of it, or piled in the middle.  Mmmm, salad with basil-Parmesan cream sauce!

Sometimes you'll order a special salad as a starter course and find the fancy ingredients on top of the same old greens.

Here's one salad that was delightfully different.

Last Mango in Paris

I wrote recently about a gorgeous dessert from Paris that featured a puree of mango and passionfruit.  Mango is apparently a big thing in the French culinary world these days, because we saw it in several places.

Here's a filet of roast cod, swimming in a sea of carrot puree and topped with mango.

Here's a spring roll filled with crabmeat, vegetables and mango.

Here they are on special at the market.  The sign said they come from Mali by air.

Presentation counts

There are a few important differences between food fixed at home and fixed in a nice restaurant.  Professional chefs, of course, have equipment that home cooks don't, and probably access to better produce and meat.  But one difference that always delights me is how good chefs present the food, beautifully arranged and garnished.  You almost hate to dig in and ruin the picture!

Perhaps because Paris has a reputation to uphold as the world capital of fine cuisine (whether that reputation is valid or not) its restaurants do a great job on presentation.  Here are some beautiful plates served at our tables on our recent trip.

At the market

Before we went to France on vacation, I read an article in the New York Times about how conservative the local tastes are regarding vegetables.  It described a Normandy truck farmer who decided to branch out as "a maverick in a field where most farmers grow pretty much the same produce: leeks, carrots, a handful of lettuce varieties, turnips, celery root, beets, onions, shallots, parsnips and maybe Jerusalem artichokes."

So I was interested to visit a farmer's market in Paris, where a much wider variety of stuff was on display.  The stalls were beautiful, often decorated with artfully cut fruits and vegetables so you could be tempted by the delectable flesh.

Often the produce was taken from its shipping crates and arranged on big trays like still lifes.

But even the crates seemed to have been packed by an artist.

Sphere au chocolat

Well, friends, enough of sewing machines in small restaurants in Kentucky -- I've just gotten home from Paris!  The food was glorious, of course, and I made myself obnoxious by photographing not just my own and my husband's plates, but those of everybody within camera range.  What a fabulous assortment of ingredients and presentations.

I'll start by sharing Ken's favorite dessert of the trip.  He liked it so much that we returned to the same restaurant for our farewell, and he ordered it again.  I was happy because on the first trip I was so busy taking pictures of somebody else's dessert that he had already eaten half of his, thus spoiling my photo op.  And you can see why it demanded a photo.

The name of the dessert was Sphere au Chocolat, and when the plate arrived, there was the sphere, nestled in a bit of yellow-orange puree.

Carefully tip the top hemisphere off, and you find more of the puree (mango and passionfruit) and a little scoop of ice cream.  Ken thought it was something other than vanilla because of the little brown specks, but I thought it was just -- well, you know, French vanilla.

While he ate, I wondered just how you make the little chocolate hemispheres.  Do you dip an icecream scoop type of device into the chocolate, let it drain, then pop off the chocolate with an icecream scoop type of mechanism?  Or do you dip your round tool in upside down and let the chocolate form around the outside?  Who knew chefs had to be engineers.